Organizations of all sizes struggle with developing and maintaining optimal communications systems and methods to help achieve organizational goals and objectives. The solutions currently being employed, when evaluated critically, are found for the most part to be inefficient, cumbersome, and inadequate for the task. Many organizations in recent years have come to rely on e-mail for knowledge exchange. However, e-mail is chaotic and is accompanied by a high “noise” level. Broadcast e-mails throughout an organization waste productive time for those members who read the e-mail but are not part of the problem, the solution, or even an intended recipient. Once sent and stored, accessing and retrieving pertinent e-mails is inefficient at best, and are not much more than mini “silos” of knowledge lacking interconnectedness. This is due in part to the point-to-point nature of e-mail communication—it is not visible (except for the ubiquitous broadcast e-mail mentioned above) to others who could potentially benefit from the message.
At the other end of the spectrum, current Knowledge Management (“KM”) software products represent overkill for many types of organizations. Knowledge Management may be defined as an attempt to embody organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings. With the advent of new technologies, such as data mining, intranets, video conferencing, and web casting, several technology vendors are offering such solutions as panaceas for the business challenges of the knowledge era. Trade press coverage of the “productivity paradox” has further added to the speed of the information technology (“IT”) treadmill by suggesting that increasing investments in new information technologies should somehow result in improved business performance.
KM systems have shown themselves to be expensive to implement and maintain, and frankly, too complicated for most users. Their static design coupled with pre-defined content (documents) provides only a limited benefit. Thus, a need exists for a system and method that enables communication to take place that takes advantage of the ways in which knowledge workers communicate and operate through the social processes of collaborating, sharing knowledge, and building on each other's ideas.
Another segment of the market, so-called “groupware” applications, focus on project and task management, and may include document sharing capability, discussion threads, team calendars, etc. These applications are typically driven by specific project milestones, meetings or events. Knowledge is accumulated during the project, but does not evolve on a continuous basis once the project team disbands. Participation is typically limited to project team members and teams are not easily interlinked.
However, outside of traditional organization hierarchies and project teams, organization members often interact through informal groups which have a common interest or mission. These “communities of practice” or “communities of interest” are often self-directed and organic in nature. They transcend traditional organization structures and explicitly defined project teams. Knowledge is transparent across teams and visible to entire organizations or groups of organizations. Membership is diverse and continually evolves (participation by members can fluctuate to suit their needs, members can leave, while new members join). Knowledge creation and discovery is continuous (it does not end with the completion of a project or event). Communities of practice play an increasingly important role in spurring innovation and accelerating business processes within and across organizations. Experts in the field believe that community-driven collaborative knowledge communities will increasingly become a key element of high-performing organizations.
Some technology experts and academic scholars have, however, observed that there is no direct correlation between IT investments and business performance. This conclusion is also supported by a recent industry-wide analysis of IT investments. On a similar note, another study underscores that in the last twenty years, U.S. industry has invested more than $1 trillion in technology but has realized little improvement in the efficiency or effectiveness of its knowledge workers. This failure is attributed to most organization's ignorance of ways in which knowledge workers communicate and operate through the social processes of collaborating, sharing knowledge, and building on each other's ideas.